Books on Abraham Lincoln

1. Honor's Voice

By Douglas L. Wilson Knopf, 1998

In "Honor's Voice," Douglas L. Wilson traces "the transformation of Abraham Lincoln," from his entrance into the village of New Salem, Ill., as a 22-year-old "piece of floating driftwood" (as Lincoln described himself) to his marriage to Mary Todd 11 years later. Wilson offers a detailed account of the wrestling match that won Lincoln the respect of his fellow New Salemites and that would become a prominent feature in the legend of his rise. The author is especially good on Lincoln's courtship of Mary Todd and their mysteriously broken engagement: Her betrothed simply realized that he and Mary were incompatible, but in the end he did marry her, mainly out of a sense of honor. Paying careful attention to primary sources, Wilson brings a fresh eye to this comprehensive view of Lincoln's path to maturity. The route was not so smooth as once supposed, but rather was full of setbacks and disappointments.

2. The Young Eagle

By Kenneth J. Winkle Taylor, 2001

Kenneth J. Winkle mined public records (census data, voting returns, legislative roll calls and the like) to compose a strikingly original study that locates Lincoln in the context of his time and place. The author shows, for example, that the Colonization Society in Springfield, Ill., to which Lincoln belonged, was not a racist outfit, as is often alleged, and that its members opposed the harsh anti-black measures adopted by Illinois voters. Winkle also explains the paradox of Lincoln's devotion to the Whig Party, traditionally viewed as the bastion of privilege and aristocracy, rather than to the Jacksonian Democrats, the professed champions of the common man. Lincoln believed that the Whig program of support for banks, tariffs and infrastructure improvement would allow poor subsistence farmers, like his father, to enter a market economy and thus escape the poverty and backwardness that young Lincoln had observed on the frontier.

3. Lincoln's Melancholy

By Joshua Wolf Shenk Houghton Mifflin, 2005

On two occasions in his early adulthood, Lincoln was so depressed that his friends feared for his life. Later he was predisposed to depression but did not again suffer a truly severe crisis. In "Lincoln's Melancholy," Joshua Wolf Shenk probes both the nature and effects of Lincoln's depressions. Based on psychological theory and on original research in long-neglected documents—such as the records of an Illinois insane asylum where one of Lincoln's relatives was incarcerated—Shenk's work shows how Lincoln's tendency to depression helped shape his character, making him unusually empathetic.

4. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly

By Jennifer Fleischner Broadway, 2003

Jennifer Fleischner's dual biography is of course primarily concerned with Mary Todd Lincoln and her dressmaker and confidante, a former slave named Elizabeth Keckly. But the author also shows how President Lincoln lived in constant fear that his wife would do something to publicly humiliate him—as indeed she often did. An industrious researcher as well as a graceful writer, Fleischner is generally sympathetic to the first lady but does not excuse Mary's many foibles: her terrible temper, her fundamental dishonesty in padding payrolls and household expenses, and her epic narcissism.

5. Herndon's Lincoln

By William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik University of Illinois, 2006

This classic work by Lincoln's law partner (originally published in 1889) is the most influential biography of Lincoln ever written. Editors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson have meticulously edited and annotated the original version and added chapters that appeared in the book's second edition, in 1892. After Lincoln's death, Herndon, who was a close friend, interviewed scores of others who also knew him well. He wanted to save Lincoln from the idolaters who portrayed him as a saint. For example, he insisted that Lincoln was intensely ambitious, that "his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." Herndon revealed that Lincoln believed his mother to be illegitimate, her biological father a Virginia planter. Lincoln thought he inherited his talents from that grandfather, Herndon said, rather than from his own father, from whom he was estranged. Herndon produced an unusually full-blooded, three-dimensional portrait of Lincoln as a man.

—Mr. Burlingame, a history professor at the University of Illinois-Springfield, is the author of "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" and "The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln."

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